Many attempts have been made in the packaging industry to provide customers with convenient containers which are easy and economical to ship prior to loading, and which when loaded with product allow convenient dispensing of product carried by the container. In the health services and medical professions, there is often a need to dispense medical goods in small stackable trays, each tray carrying the items needed for one patient. For example, small plastic trays carrying a syringe, a cleaning swab, and a drug may be stacked several trays high and shipped as a unit by the manufacturer of the medical goods. A zippered score allows a portion of the container to be removed to grasp the trays one at a time for use with an individual patient.
Typically, dispensers for these products have end closure which are glued once the stack of product trays is loaded into the container. The use of end closures which are glued unfortunately requires that the empty containers be assembled and glued at the manufacturers facilities after the containers are loaded, thereby requiring an investment in containererecting equipment.
Designs for containers which include end closures which are not glued but consist of tuck flaps at either end solve the problem of the need for container-erecting equipment, but these type containers cannot reliably include a tear-away portion of the container. Tearing away a removable portion of a tuck-flap type container in order to allow dispensing product results in an unstable container which simply falls apart and does not function to hold together the supply of product trays.
In our prior related application identified above, we disclosed a container which overcame the problems in the art and provided an end-loading container that is closed for shipping without gluing and becomes a top-dispensing container by tearing away the top panel. Although this provided a serviceable and commercially successful container, it has been found that overly aggressive users may exert enough outward pressure on the tuck-in closure end panel of the container to cause the dust flaps to tear away from the side panels.